Ted Nugent blasts Matt Damon on Palin

Ted Nugent and Matt Damon disagree. Imagine that.

The noted hard rock star and hunter doesn't see eye-to-eye with the popular actor in assessing the qualifications of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Palin is "absurd"

In a recent video interview, Matt Damon was asked his thoughts about McCain's surprise running mate. Saying that he knew very little about Palin outside of her mayoral and gubernatorial experience, he chalked it up to pure politics before calling it absurd.

"It's like a really bad Disney movie," Damon told the Associated Press. "The Hockey Mom.' Oh, I'm just a hockey mom from Alaska, and she's president. She's facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It's absurd."

A calm Nugent

Anyone who has watched Ted Nugent appear on talk shows over the years knows he can deliver a punch when he deems it necessary. In an email exchange The Vote had with Nugent this morning, the rock star starts off diplomatic.

"To be concerned is prudent, but his references are without merit," Nugent wrote. "Her record in politics proves she is a tough woman of intellect, logic, common sense, integrity and defying courage. Theoretically, Matt's concerns would better be aimed at and earned by Barack Obama."

Palin's great

Nugent had high praise for the Republican vice presidential nominee, who - like Nugent - is an avid hunter.

"I like her a lot," he said. "I have examined her record and she is my kind of elected official. She may very well be the best Republican in America today."

Streisand

Damon is only one of many celebrities who have come out against the McCain ticket. As we told you earlier today, Barbra Streisand is having a fundraiser tonight for Barack Obama that is expected to raise $9 million.

Streisand expressed outrage with the Palin selection, calling it a "calculated, cynical ploy" and predicting that it will ultimately fail.

“We are not that stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Streisand wrote on her website (with 20 exclamation points).

Cusack

Actor John Cusack, in a blistering column posted yesterday on the Huffington Post, argued that the Obama team must ignore the GOP vice-presidential nominee and focus on McCain and his policies.

"McCain and the neocon ideologues won't 'reform' government, they will gut government and privatize everything in sight in the name of responding to the crises they helped engineer through Bush and Cheney," Cusack writes. "Their view of government is the reverse of the Hippocratic Oath: do harm and then when the patient is sick, give the wrong medicine, watch him die, and sell off the body parts."

A not-so-calm Nugent

Nugent, an outspoken conservative, is a minority in the entertainment community. When asked why the celebrity crowd seems to better connect with the Democratic party, Nugent becomes the Nugent you know on TV -- unfiltered.

"With all due respect, many in the entertainment industry are deep into mind-altering substance abuse, and when one's logic and intellectual calculating powers are replaced with dopey feel-good, fantasy- driven denial, the democratic party serves them well," Nugent blasted.

The world of Ted

What's Nugent up to, by the way? Well, with less than a week to go before Fall, one doesn't have to guess what he's getting ready for.

" [I'm] preparing for the greatest hunting season of my life, all filmed for our Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild TV show on the Outdoor Channel," Nugent wrote. "My new book from Regnery publishing, "TED WHITE & BLUE-The Nugent Manifesto" is unleashed the 1st week of October, and my killer band and I will attempt to record some new instant Motown classic lovesongs in between hunts, ASAP. Life is good when one puts his heart and soul into everything he does."